Understanding critical race theory as a framework in higher educational research

This paper reviews the existing literature to discuss how critical race theory has been applied as a theoretical framework to higher educational research in the United States and what its contributions are. To provide necessary context, I will discuss race and racism in the United States, the background of US higher education in relation to race, the emergence of critical race theory and its application in US higher education.     

Black on black education 2.0: critical race perspectives on personally engaged pedagogy for/by black pre-service teachers

ABSTRACT

Public schools have increasing numbers of its teachers fitting into one demographic, white and female, while the numbers of Black/African American teachers decrease. This trend has not changed since the publication of Black on Black Education: Personally Engaged Pedagogy for/by African American Pre-Service Teachers. Furthermore, African American collegiate students who decide to enter teaching may face a chilly climate because of their cultural and educational experiences as they encounter devaluation in the classroom. This work provides a critical race reflective examination into the teaching and learning experiences and dilemmasI using personally engaged pedagogy as a means of enhancing the quality of the learning experiences for African American pre-service teachers. Critical race theory (CRT) and Critical Race Feminism (CRF) will be used as the theoretical framework for understanding the role of race and gender in teacher education. Critical autoethnography is the methodological approach used to examine the subject phenomenon. Field notes, research journaling, and student memoirs provide data for this critical autoethnography. This work highlights the significance of CRT/CRF’s unique voice of color and CRF’s multidimensionality to engaged pedagogy, creating a personally engaged pedagogy.     

On the utility of Asian critical (AsianCrit) theory in the field of education

Abstract

Despite the powerful influence of race and racism on the experiences and outcomes of Asian Americans in US education, coherent conceptual frameworks specifically focused on delineating how White supremacy shapes the lives of this population are difficult to find. The AsianCrit framework, grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the experiences and voices of Asian Americans, can begin filling this gap. In this article, we review an AsianCrit framework and examine Asian American issues in education through seven AsianCrit tenets to demonstrate their utility in the analysis of and advocacy for Asian Americans in U.S. education. We end by discussing implications of how AsianCrit can provide a framework to guide future research, policy and practice, as well as a foundation for discourse around the racialized experiences of Asians Americans and other racially marginalized groups in education.     

Writing critical race theory and method: a composite counterstory on the experiences of black teachers in New Orleans post-Katrina

Using a critical race theory lens, the authors propose a way of writing race research using composite counterstories. Drawing on data from a yearlong study of school rebuilding in the time period immediately after Hurricane Katrina devastated the City of New Orleans, the authors examine the experiences of African-American educators in the school rebuilding efforts. Cook and Dixson look specifically at how composite counterstories speak back to racialized constructions of black educators that justified their post-Katrina displacement and usher in an era of school reform in which New Orleans is described as “ground zero” for the expansion of charter schools, the disempowerment of teachers’ unions, and the re-organization of teacher preparation. Given the context of the research, the authors argue that researchers should consider how composite counterstories facilitate racial research and ensure the protection of research participants.     

临界竞争的消除方法

给出了电平异步时序逻辑电路临界竞争的第四种消除方法。     

The Anti-Black Order of No Child Left Behind: Using Lacanian psychoanalysis and critical race theory to examine NCLB

During a period in which institutions have been refashioned to meet the demands of a complex social and political economy, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has helped to alter the public educational system. As scholars and researchers examine the material effects of NCLB, efforts to improve the educational system and its effects must also explore the relationship between policy and racial ideologies including discursive fantasies. This article examines the relationship between NCLB and racial fantasies of Black youth as problematic others in order to help education reform scholarship and advocacy examine the violence of NCLB.     

Still flies in buttermilk: black male faculty,critical race theory,and composite counterstorytelling

Driven by critical race theory, this essay employs composite counterstorytelling to narrate the experiences of black male faculty on traditionally white campuses. Situated at the intersections of race and gender, our composite counterstory is richly informed by 11 interviews with black male faculty alongside critical race scholarship that documents the omnipresence of black misandric ideology. Through our protagonist Dr Timesnow, a black male Assistant Professor, we reflect on how his daily experiences incite racial battle fatigue, feed into imposter syndrome, and circumvent an inclusive campus community.     

Critical race theory in education,Marxism and abstract racial domination

In the context of the ongoing debate between critical race theory (CRT) and Marxism, I begin in this paper by examining the origins of CRT in Critical Legal Studies (CLS) in the United States. I go on to describe CRT's entry into education, first in that country, and then in the United Kingdom. I move on to a discussion of current debates between critical race theorists and Marxists, focusing on an analysis of arguments for the existence of abstract racial domination.     

Contracting race: writing,racism, and education

This article presents the main terms of the racial contract, as they appear in the subcontracts of Mills’ theory, such as the spatial, epistemological, cognitive subcontracts. It is important to keep in mind that these subcontracts are by no means separate and represent analytical moments of the main contract. Furthermore, other than its institutional form, education is not a separate sphere from the racial contract. Finally, I end with the racial contract’s gaps to determine the possibility of its own demise, which requires the active signing off from the terms of the contract. That is, I sketch ideas about ways to counteract (i.e., counter-write) the racial contract as part of a corrective to the history that interpellates people of color as its targets. Both Whites and people of color have a stake in the rewriting of the contract, where in the end they are imagined as neither Black nor White but free. In this last portion, I spend some text on what Whites’ role may look like in signing off the contract, such as the case of white ‘race traitors’ within the white abolitionist proposal, recast as the ‘epistemological traitor’ in education.     

Critical race theory in India: theory translation and the analysis of social identities and discrimination in Indian schooling

This article examines ethical and philosophical considerations in theory translation, i.e. translating a theoretical framework from its original place to another national context. Critical race theory (CRT) was developed in the United States through significant struggle in order to analyze everyday racism. Marginalized groups have historically shared postcolonial critiques, conceptualizations of social justice, and methods for mass resistance across national borders. Through an analysis of the literature on CRT and contemporary India, this article explores whether CRT’s principles and methodology can be employed to research discrimination within India’s school system. Can CRT be sensitive to the differences in context and still retain its philosophical center? This analysis reveals that CRT may be particularly helpful in highlighting the educational discrimination experienced by Dalits via use of CRT’s social construction thesis to conceptualize caste and intersectionality to understand caste’s relationship to gender and class.     

Intersections of race and sexuality in a teacher education course

This paper examines the ways that one group of US pre‐service teachers, enrolled in an alternate route teacher education class, expressed and challenged each other’s contradictory discourses about teaching for social justice. Particularly significant are the many ways that this group of students enacted subject positions around race and sexuality as various combinations of African American, White, gay, straight, lesbian, Christian, and as members of this class. Epiphanic moments about race and sexual orientation are examined to illuminate the ways that subject positions were contested, reified, or renegotiated in order to preserve a sense of community within the class. This research demonstrates the ways that social justice teacher education differentially positions people who have been historically marginalized and how it can at times reify a hierarchy of marginality.     

Curriculum as colour and curves: a synthesis of Black theory,design and creativity realised as critical curriculum writing

This article looks to three inspirational Black women, bell hooks, Stacey McBride-Irby and Patricia Williams, in the pursuit of radical curriculum. While today curriculum is critiqued as racialised, gendered, sexualised and classed, the formats of curriculum documents such as text books, units of work and lesson plans have changed little. These documents are often conceived as linear sequences of steps leading to outcomes, and their voices are distanced and ‘neutral’. Drawing on a doctoral study of curriculum design in Australia, this article embraces a different approach by opening up a unit of work on girls’ popular culture to hooks’ invocations to teach to transgress, so that curriculum might be experienced as colour and curves, rather than a monochrome route to a pre-determined end point. Through this, along with hooks, I invite teachers to live pedagogy, rather than to deliver it.     

Eco-heroes out of place and relations: decolonizing the narratives of Into the Wild and Grizzly Man through Land education

Eco-heroic quests for environmental communion continue to be represented, mediated, and glorified through film and media narratives. This paper examines two eco-heroic quests in the Alaskan ‘wilderness’ that have been portrayed in two Hollywood motion pictures: the movies Grizzly Man and Into the Wild. Both films vividly document and re-inscribe heroic status to the stories of Timothy Treadwell (Grizzly Man) and Christopher McCandless (Into the Wild), their tragic encounters with nature, and the pivotal experiences that gave them both eco-heroic identities in the American imagination. As is often the case for Greek and Shakespearean dramas, each hero met a tragic, unnecessary death in Alaskan ‘wilderness’, but in the process reiterated a settler colonial narrative. We argue that an Indigenous-focused Land education and its counter-narratives of holistic relations are sorely needed. It is Indigenous Land education that can break the cycle of Eurocentric celebrations of solitary heroism, rugged individualism, and ignorance of place. In order to forge Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations in our cultural imaginations and to address compounding environmental struggles, we need to turn to Indigenous stories and teachings that are already in place, in deep relation with the Land, water, animals and plants on Indigenous territory. We need to turn to Land education that is currently not in place or acknowledged in environmental education.     

Introducing sustainability into university curricula: an indicator and baseline survey of the views of university teachers at the University of Valencia

Many higher education institutions have assumed the role of diffusing knowledge, values, attitudes and behaviours that favour sustainability. A key objective in such work is training university teachers to apply sustainability criteria to their respective disciplines. While university teachers' active participation is essential to achieving this goal, their ideas about and predispositions towards introducing sustainability into curricula are not always understood or appreciated. In this paper, we report on a questionnaire survey at the University of Valencia, Spain, on the current baseline situation for introducing sustainability across the university's curricula. We also report on a measure to periodically review the situation, including progress of and/or decline in introducing sustainability into diverse subject areas, focusing on a series of indicators grouped under the common name ‘π Indicator’. Key findings from the survey include the widespread support for introducing sustainability across the university's curricula; however, as might be expected, significant differences occur in how questions are addressed by staff from various disciplines, including how they relate to departmental perceptions, interpretations and performance of sustainability‐related teaching.     

Enact,discard, and transform: a critical race feminist perspective on professional socialization among tenured Black female faculty

Through an analysis informed by critical race feminism, this paper examines the intersection of professional socialization and agency among tenured Black female faculty at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). Professional socialization entails the transmission and reproduction of professional norms. However, within PWIs, professional socialization emanates from a legacy of race and gender exclusion. Thus, normative conceptualizations of professional development may not adequately address how Black women negotiate institutional cues to define their professorial role. The findings show that a three-prong model of engagement: enacting, discarding, and transforming institutional norms, comprised the participants’ socialization process; agency played an important role in their career success. Implications for facilitating agency among Black female faculty and similarly situated groups are discussed.     

Taking the risk to engage in race talk: professional development in elementary schools

Developing public education where every child has the right to learn requires that teachers pay attention to and engage in race talk – open discussion about race, social construction of race, and racism. While it is clear that children engage and reflect critically about these aspects of race even at a young age, teachers rarely engage in race talk with them. In this study, an African-American preservice teacher and a White teacher educator explore how African-American, Polynesian, and White in-service teachers, participating in Courageous Conversations professional development, address or avoid race talk in their elementary schools through the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and what risks they take when they do. Findings, through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, demonstrate that (1) racism was observed and/or experienced by all teachers in elementary schools; (2) lived racial experiences impacted teachers’ approach to conversations about race; (3) creating an open space was crucial for race conversations; (4) Courageous Conversations provided a ‘new language’ to talk about race; and (5) administrative support facilitated more attention to race. Findings indicate the road to greater equity in schools requires more professional development about race talk in elementary schools.     

Validity in mixed methods research in education: the application of Habermas' critical theory

Mixed methods approach has developed into the third methodological movement in educational research. Validity in mixed methods research as an important issue, however, has not been examined as extensively as that of quantitative and qualitative research. Additionally, the previous discussions of validity in mixed methods research focus on research design and procedure, rather than validity per se. This paper presents another perspective by using philosophical and methodological insights generated from Habermas’ critical theory, especially his Theory of Communicative Action and validity claims. Theoretical assumptions and how they are consistent with principles of mixed methods research are introduced. Three types of validity claims are explained with an example and how they are applied to understanding validity in mixed methods research is further discussed. This paper concludes with implications for educational research and future directions.     

Primary music education: the misrepresentation of the ideals of curricula in research

The author starts from a historical viewpoint to suggest that, at primary level, we have tended to perpetuate a nineteenth-century notion of music education. This is evident in the selection and organisation of musical content in curriculum documents, the scope of the teacher–pupil transaction implicit in these and the assumptions about music education which underpin research on practice conducted at official policy level. In light of the introduction of the 1999 Revised Primary School Curriculum, with its change in emphasis, she notes that it is timely to reconsider the situation. Central to this is the need to challenge the notion of music as a set of delineated skills, to explore the relationship between the primary teacher and music, and to move towards a notion of research which acknowledges the richness of multiple interpretations teachers bring to the curriculum.